Conference: 8th International Plant Phenotyping Symposium 2024

The 8th International Plant Phenotyping Symposium (IPPS) will be held at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on October 7-11, 2024. The International Plant Phenotyping Network (IPPN), who organizes this event, is the premier international scientific organization in plant phenotyping. Plant phenotyping, or phenomics, is a scientific discipline that is essential to capturing information about plant biology, gene-by-environment interactions, and ecological/environmental stewardship.

Capturing this information is essential to providing food and feed security to a growing global population while caring for our planet. The IPPS is the leading international platform for the presentation of the most exciting research and application in plant phenotyping across the globe and the IPPS8 is the first time that this event will be held in the US.

The broader impacts of this proposal lie in the future research advances that will come from the resulting interactions and networking among plant phenotyping scientists. Such advances will yield improved strategies for increasing domestic plant production while improving plant ecosystem health for the benefits of society.

While the IPPS is the leading international platform for research and application in plant phenotyping, the NAPPN Strategic Meeting will assemble stakeholders in plant phenotyping to develop a strategic plan for the domestic plant phenotyping community. Phenomics is an interdisciplinary science where plant systems biology, quantitative genetics, metabolomics, and agronomy intersect with intensive computational science and engineering, and technologies for remote sensing, imaging, and robotics.

As such, effective phenotyping requires knowledge sharing and communication across disciplines and economic sectors (academia, non-profit, government, industry). Phenotyping science occurs across biological scales, from molecular to cellular to organismal to ecological. The IPPS8 will be advertised through established research coordination networks and organizations (MANNRS, HBCUs, Tribal Colleges).

Travel awardees will have an opportunity to share their own research through oral or poster presentations and “lightning talks”. These attendees will be paired with `conference mentors` to enhance their in-person experience. Accessibility to IPPS8 content will be provided by recording selected talks to be distributed virtually post-conference and in the form of short papers in a special edition of a journal.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.